Hey everyone, welcome back to another video.
Today's video is going to be what I think is
one of the most awaited videos on this channel
in over two years.
In today's video, I'm going to be covering
all of the changes that have happened in the
print on demand space since I've been gone here on YouTube.
With that said, I'm going to try to keep this video
as concise as possible so you can watch it through one time
and be caught up to speed on
all the changes that have happened in print on demand
over the last couple years.
Now, lastly, before we get into this video,
stay tuned next week
because the other big business model, affiliate marketing,
I'm going to be making a video just like this
covering all the changes that have happened
in that business model.
So if you're in that business as well,
you should watch that one next week.
Without further ado,
let's go ahead and get started in this video.
So if we're looking at the changes
that have happened in print on demand,
I'm going to start with the biggest foundational change.
Now, this change is something that
doesn't directly affect you,
but it's something that you need to know as a seller
so you can understand how the print on demand space has
kind of evolved over the last couple years.
Now, what this change is, is that print on demand
has split into two different types of print on demand.
First being passive print on demand, as I like to call it,
and active print on demand.
Now, essentially the difference you need to understand
between these two types of print on demand
is that one of them, the passive print on demand,
is the style where you create designs,
you upload them to marketplaces
that get traffic on their own,
and you just kind of collect your profit.
On the other side there is active print on demand.
And essentially what this is
is you are creating your own store,
you're paying to host that
basically with your own website domain
and then you're driving your own traffic to that store
and you're really a hands on
more customizable clothing brand.
Now, a couple other differences here are
the active print on demand,
you have to pay for your own store.
So this is typically going to be through Shopify
and you have to use a plugin like Printful or Printify,
something like that to fulfill your print on demand.
Now, the catch here is that by using Shopify,
you have to pay a minimum of $29 per month.
So that's the hands on approach
and that is the active print on demand.
Coming over to the other side,
this is the passive print on demand.
This is the one that I like
and this is the one that I teach on this channel
that is totally free to do
and you're basically just uploading designs
to these other websites that already get traffic.
You don't have to drive your own traffic.
All the people will be coming and making purchases
on their own, and that's what makes it more passive.
So since that became such a big difference
between those two styles in the last couple of years,
I wanted to make sure
that you guys were caught up to speed on that.
So continuing on the passive print on demand side,
the side that I like to stay on,
let's move down what the changes are over there.
So this is where the big changes in the last couple years
that will affect you guys who have been following
the style that I teach in passive print on demand.
This is where they come in.
So right off the bat,
just to give you guys some peace of mind,
the process that I have been teaching here on YouTube
for the last couple years still works.
It's the process that I still use.
There have been some really minor changes
that don't really affect anything,
it's just things that I have learned along the way.
However, there's been one pretty big change.
That's the thing that I'll explain here next.
So the big change that has happened in the last couple years
is which websites are getting the most traffic.
So traditionally,
I have been recommending Teespring, Red Bubble,
and Merch by Amazon.
They are the big three players
and I can happily say to date
that they have pretty much stayed the top three big players.
So if you have listings on those sites,
that is absolutely awesome.
They should be getting great traffic and, going forward,
I can say that that order has kind of changed.
I've always recommended it Teespring, Red Bubble,
Merch by Amazon.
However, the big change is that
Amazon has just gotten so big, they've really taken over
and Red Bubble got a really big jump in traffic too
in the last couple years.
So what I've learned over the last couple of years
is to switch your focus to Merch by Amazon First,
Red Bubble second, and Teespring third.
That is the biggest change that I have seen
in the last couple of years
and that's really just an allocation of your energy.
Where you're putting your time,
where you're putting your listings first,
where you're investing the most work and
building that platform up
needs to change to Merch by Amazon.
Essentially, over the last couple of years,
Amazon got really big.
They peaked at about 2 billion visitors per month
and now they're at somewhere around 1 to 1.5 billion people
going to their website every single month.
Those are all people making purchases on Amazon.
That's why you wanna have your listings there
because everyone's getting used to Amazon
and everyone's buying things from there every single day
without even thinking about it.
When they go to new websites, like Red Bubble or Teespring,
it's not as easy, there's a little bit more resistance
when making a purchase compared to Amazon.
Now looking at the changes with Red Bubble next,
they have just simply gotten more popular.
Over the last couple of years,
they did a great job with all of their processes,
their marketing, their advertising
and they have become more of a household name.
So they are getting about 25 million people to their website
every single month
just making purchases of print on demand items.
So I highly recommend trying to take advantage
of the increase in traffic and
their website traffic continues to increase
basically month over month.
Now, looking at Teespring,
there has been a little bit of confusion on
what happened to Teespring.
Is it now called Spring?
Well, let me just clarify that for you.
So about two years ago,
Teespring came out with a new feature I like to call it
which was called Spring
which is geared more towards content creators
giving them the ability to easily make a store
and sell merch.
This, to me, made it seem like Teespring as a company
was trying to move more into the
active print on demand style
that we were talking about earlier,
with your custom store and you drive people to it yourself
rather than the organic traffic
that comes to their site every day.
However, with that big change happening,
they still kept Teespring.
So Teespring as a website and a marketplace
where you can buy print on demand items has stayed active.
That has stayed active all of this time.
So it still remains a great place with a lot of traffic
to have your designs listed.
Now, those are the major changes that are likely
affecting you if you've been following these strategies
that I've been teaching on this channel.
Now, with that in mind,
there's one change that I see
that may be coming in the near future and
something that I wanna let you guys in on
because it's something I've been personally watching.
Now, what this change is
is potentially adding a fourth website or marketplace
to our passive print on demand websites that we upload to.
So as you guys know,
it's typically the three that we always talk about,
Merch by Amazon, Red Bubble, Teespring.
However, I've been watching Zazzle,
which seems to be getting a lot of traffic to their website
and all of this traffic is organic.
It means that the website is just simply
ranking on search engines and pulling a lot of people
who are looking to make purchases over to their marketplace.
This is a site that I'm going to be keeping my eye on
and if their traffic continues to increase,
then I'm going to start uploading
all of my listings over there.
So my recommendation to you guys is
keep an eye on it as well.
Go check it out, see what you think.
Maybe upload some listings to it,
some of your designs that hopefully you have in storage
that you've uploaded to the other sites
and see if you get any early success.
I'd love to know if you guys get some early success
and maybe that'll come into play
to help me make the decision of
if this is a good platform for us to
start uploading on as well.
So guys, those are the major changes in print on demand
that have happened over the last couple of years.
Hopefully that catches us all up to speed.
And if you have any particular questions about changes
or anything that you've been watching
and you're curious about, let me know in the comments.
I'd be happy to help you out,
see if there's anything that I have seen on my side
that I can share some helpful information with you about.
As always, if you guys like this video,
please leave a thumbs up,
I appreciate that and I'll see you all in the next video.